Originally published on February 15, 2016

I firmly believe that identifying experts and facilitators is a crucial, ongoing responsibility within organizations. More broadly, recognizing talent can be streamlined with a simple yet powerful question: In moments of challenge, whom would you most want by your side?

Next, what I wrote in 2016:

All organizations have problems, some serious and others not so serious, but they always exist.

When problems arise, solutions are necessary. The longer solutions take, the more serious and costly the problems become.

By nature, leaders, managers, bosses, directors, and everyone else with a problem need to find a solution. This is where the position of expert or facilitator is assumed.

With the expert role, the instruction for solving the problem is immediate; the organization complies with the instruction, and the problem is resolved. Depending on the severity of the problem, the time to resolve it may vary.

In the facilitator role, the person in charge doesn’t have the immediate solution but must be able to find and communicate it. To achieve this, they have various tools, which we can summarize as follows: consultation of available materials (printed, digital, etc.), consultation with internal staff, and consultation with external staff.

Ultimately, whether in the role of expert or facilitator, problems are resolved as long as the organization complies with the instructions.
Ideally, an organization should have people on its staff who can fulfill either role or both simultaneously. If they haven’t identified them, it’s advisable to understand the skills of their team.

There are several ways to identify experts or facilitators. The most common is a set of questions or analyses that human talent has conducted that haven’t been previously considered. A more complicated approach would be for staff to be interviewed by one or more experts.

The strength of any organization lies in the strength of its experts or facilitators, the organization’s willingness to listen to them, and the organization’s ability to execute what its experts have defined or its facilitators have found.